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Trusted community partners are critical to serving the entire community and saving lives in a public health emergency. Meals on Wheels brings community connectedness, social support, and decreased anxiety to the home-bound population [1]. It’s more than just providing a meal! As a trusted partner, Meals on Wheels can help public health agencies provide emergency medications to these population through non-traditional medical countermeasures (MCM) dispensing during public health emergencies.

In cooperation with public health jurisdictions in Frederick County, Maryland; Baltimore City, Maryland; Natick County, Massachusetts; and Portland, Oregon, CDC initiated a pilot project to develop a standardized Meals on Wheels dispensing template for MCM operations. NACCHO participates in member recruitment for the project. The project team is making great strides developing the Meals on Wheels dispensing template. The goal is to develop a multi-faceted approach for health departments to use for their MCM planning with Meals on Wheels partners by incorporating existing best practices.

Some jurisdictions already partner with Meals on Wheels and have valuable information to share. The planning team could use additional existing Meals on Wheels best practices and resources to augment the MCM dispensing planning efforts with Meals on Wheels partners. Health departments interested in sharing Meals on Wheels plans and resources should complete the following:

Identify state or local plans, templates, resources, materials or tools that support MCM dispensing operations for your Meals on Wheels partner. Note: please send plans, templates, resources, materials, or tools in pdf or Microsoft Word formats.

Include Meals on Wheels MCM planning concepts and lessons learned, if available.

About Raymond Puerini

Raymond Puerini, MPH, is a Senior Program Analyst on the Environmental Health, Pandemic Preparedness, and Catastrophic Response team at NACCHO. His work includes sharing best practices for the distribution and dispensing of medical countermeasures and developing policy and guidance to support strategic national stockpile responses. Twitter: @Are_You_Ray_Dy

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